Thursday, August 2, 2012

The Laggan Redshanks

A Short History of the Laggan Redshanks, 1569-1630, was published in July and is now available on the Ulster Heritage website as a Pdf download suitable for Ipad, computers, and will read on a Kindle or similar device. There is also a Kindle copy available from Amazon, though the download version has better graphics.

A
Short History of the Laggan Redshanks, 1569-1630, is
the story of the Highland Scots, called Redshanks, which settled in east
Donegal in the sixteenth century.The
story has many interesting elements which include Clan Campbell and their
dynamic leader, Gaelic sexual intrigues, English Machiavellian manoeuvres, Iníon
Dubh, and the Redshanks themselves.

The Redshank settlement in the Laggan took
place in the tumultuous years that were dominated by Elizabethan English
attempts to bring Ulster
firmly under the control of the Crown.The
initial wave of Redshanks came to the Laggan with Iníon Dubh (Fionnuala Nic
Dhónaill) after she married Aodh Mac Manus Ó Dónaill in 1569.The Redshanks were vital players in the
affairs of those times and indeed it was their military skills that delayed the
conquest of Ulster
until the beginning of the next century.They remained in service of the O'Donnell clan until the Gaelic military
collapse after the Battle of Kinsale in 1602.

After Kinsale they remained in the Laggan,
but as the Plantation
scheme was implemented, they had new lords, the Lennox Stewarts, and the
Cunninghams of Ayrshire.The Laggan
Redshanks were unique within the Gaelic world, because they were drawn from
clan Campbell and their allies.The Campbell clan under the
leadership of the fifth Earl of Argyll were early converts to the Reformed
Faith.While part of the traditional Gaelic
world, the Laggan Redshanks' Protestant faith allowed them to fit into the post
Plantation Ulster Scots community in the Laggan.

Many of the Ulster settlers to Colonial America
that became the Scots-Irish, were the descendants of the Redshanks from the
Laggan.The Highland Scottish element in
the Scots-Irish is a commonly overlooked aspect of the Ulster Migration.Even more descendants of the Laggan Redshanks
migrated to New Brunswick and Ontario Canada
in the nineteenth century.

The Highland Scottish settlement in the
Laggan is an integral part of the shared traditions and links between Ulster and Scotland
and an important, though little known, aspect of Ulster's long history. The book runs 79 pages in the Pdf and has a map of the Laggan and illustrations of the dress of the Redshanks in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

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The Redshank will feature articles on the history and legacy of Argyll and Islands Scots circa 1200 to the present. The blog will feature DNA results that are leading to a better understanding of clan and family kinship groups in Argyll and the Islands.

The Redshank blog will also focus on Gaels from Argyll and the southern Hebrides that migrated to Ireland circa 1450 to the early 1600s. They are part of the Ulster Scot community, yet differ in some regards. They were Gaelic speaking and have both Presbyterian and Catholic backgrounds. The main areas of settlement were north Antrim and east Donegal. They remain there today and their descendants also participated in the Ulster Migration to Colonial America and Canada in the 1700s and 1800s. They became part of the Scots-Irish community in the New World.

The Redshank settlements in Ulster have not been studied in depth in the past. Their history is often overshadowed by the large influx of Scots that migrated to Ulster during the Plantation. This blog will make their interesting history better known and show how they fit into the Ulster Scot story.